Earlier this week, we wrote about embodied energy of buildings, and the concerns it poses when we think about legislating building efficiency measures. Today we take a broader view, examining economic limitations of any technology replacement effort, from rebuilding houses to replacing lightbulbs.

Suppose that high-efficiency washing machines are a necessary part of a low-carbon economy (as we believe they must be). Government tax write-offs are an effective way to encourage consumers to spend the extra money on these energy-saving machines. If the U.S. started an incentive program so effective that every consumer chose a high-efficiency machine over a conventional one, however, it would still take quite some time to replace all the energy-hogging washers in the country. Because they are such a large purchase, the vast majority of consumers replace their washing machine only when forced to do so by problems with the old machine’s operation. If you assume the average [...]

The discussions about a carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade system, tend to revolve around “putting a price on carbon,” which is to say, charging polluters money for dumping carbon into the atmosphere. But how should that money be used? Here’s a graph from Vattenfall, the Swedish power company, showing which solutions become cost-effective at a price of €40 per ton of carbon dioxide.

The yellow section has improvements that pay for themselves, since they’re generally based around not burning fuel to begin with. The green section has the improvements that will be cost-effective at the €40 price, and the blue section has the more expensive solutions.

I haven’t verified any data that went into this graph, which is based on McKinsey’s greenhouse gas abatement cost curves, so I can’t comment on how realistic the numbers are. But from an energy literacy point of view, it gives a nice graphical depiction of how [...]